,"
wrote the ambassador to Lodovico, "conducts herself well on the whole,
but often complains that I deceive her, by telling her, each morning
when she mounts her horse, that she will not find the road so rough
to-day, and then, as ill luck will have it, it turns out to be worse
than ever." At length, however, on the 23rd of December, the travellers
reached Innsbruck, and Bianca was kindly received by Maximilian's uncle,
the Archduke Sigismund of Austria, and his wife, with whom she spent
Christmas and beguiled the winter days with dancing and games, while
Erasmo Brasca went on to meet the King of the Romans at Vienna. Even
then some weeks passed before this laggard bridegroom joined his newly
wedded wife, and Erasmo Brasca's mind was sorely perturbed at his
prolonged delays and excuses. Bianca, however, whose childish mind was
easily distracted, found plenty of amusement in her new surroundings and
wrote long and affectionate letters to her uncle Lodovico, telling him
how she and the Archduchess Barbara had been dressing up their ladies _a
la Tedesca_ and _a la Lombarda_, and how the court painter, Ambrogio de
Predis, who had accompanied her from Milan to paint Maximilian's
portrait, had just made a picture of the archduchess, which greatly
pleased her. And she informs her uncle that the German princess had sent
to ask her for a portrait of Signor Lodovico, which she had been very
anxious to see and had studied with the greatest interest.

Finally, on the 9th of March, Maximilian arrived at the castle of Hall,
where his bride met him, and the marriage was at length consummated, "to
the confusion of all our enemies," as Brasca wrote triumphantly to his
master on the following morning. This union, in which Lodovico's friends
and foes alike acknowledged a master-stroke of successful diplomacy, was
not destined to prove a very happy one. From the first Maximilian looked
with critical eyes on this bride of twenty-one, who was thirteen years
younger than himself, and told Erasmo Brasca that Bianca was quite as
fair as his first wife, Mary of Burgundy, but inferior in wisdom and
good sense to that princess, adding that perhaps she might improve in
time. He treated her kindly to begin with, and gratified her by the
handsome robes which he gave her in order that she might appear attired
in German fashion at her coronation. Before long, however, he began to
find fault with her extravagant habits, and complained that she had
spen